Clinton offers vision of nation 'stronger together'

Hillary Clinton offered a confident vision Thursday night of a nation "stronger together" and capable of overcoming the forces of division to build a future with greater opportunity for all Americans despite pressing problems.

"Bonds of trust and respect are fraying," Clinton said as she formally accepted the Democratic nomination for president. "It truly is up to us: We have to decide whether we're going to work together so we can all rise together."

For Clinton, who made history as the first woman nominated by a major political party in the United States, the speech represented a high-profile chance to forge an emotional connection with the public, something she has by her own admission struggled to do in a long political career.

"I get it that some people just don't know what to make of me," Clinton said. She said she was motivated by a tenet of her Methodist faith: Do all the good you can.

Thunderous cheers greeted Clinton in the Wells Fargo Center, with party members celebrating the historic moment and the start of the final 15-week sprint to try to defeat Republican Donald Trump.

As Clinton took the stage, women and men waved American flags and several wiped away tears.

Sheila Lewis, 61, a delegate from Baton Rouge, La., held her flag up high. "Incredible," she said, shaking her head. And then around Lewis, people whooped and cheered "Hill-a-ry!" as parents lifted up their kids. She joined them in their chorus.

Polls show that majorities of voters dislike Clinton and find her untrustworthy, and overcoming those numbers is a major challenge for her candidacy. One help: Trump is more unpopular.

Clinton drew a contrast with her opponent, portraying Trump, with his boasts that he alone can fix the country's problems, as essentially un-American - and too unstable to be president.

"He loses his cool at the slightest provocation," the former secretary of state said. "Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons."

Trump, a New York real estate investor and former reality-TV star, has disparaged illegal Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and criminals, promised to build a wall on the southern border (and make Mexico pay for it), and proposed banning Muslims from entering the U.S. He has called himself the "law and order" candidate, echoing Richard M. Nixon in the turbulent 1968 election.

Clinton harked back to another Republican president, saying that Trump's vision was of "midnight in America," a far cry from the "morning in America" optimism of Ronald Reagan.

"We are clear-eyed about what our country is up against," she said. "But we are not afraid. We will rise to the challenge, just as we always have."

She also used a bit of humor to remind listeners that Trump's acceptance speech had gone on for 70-odd minutes - and I do mean odd." (Clinton spoke for just under an hour.)

Worries about economic security in a time of stagnant wages and slow growth - and frustration with government dysfunction - have fueled anger at established institutions that won the GOP nomination for Trump and made Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont a formidable challenger to Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

The share of Americans who think the country is on the wrong track is 46 percentage points higher than those who think it is heading in the right direction.

Convention week began with fury after WikiLeaks released emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee that showed party officials favoring Clinton and plotting ways to hurt Sanders' campaign - as he and his supporters had long suspected.

Enraged Sanders backers took to Philadelphia's streets in protest, with "Bernie or Bust" activists camping out in FDR Park and advocating for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. National Democratic Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign.

By the time Clinton stepped to the lectern, the tone was softening. Earlier Thursday, one group of Sanders delegates said it was time to look toward the November election and line up with Clinton.

"Trump needs to be defeated," Norman Solomon, head of the Bernie Delegates Network, said at a briefing. "Alas, the only way to do that is for people in swing states to vote for Hillary Clinton."

Activists said the movement started by Sanders would keep pressure on Clinton to deliver on progressive promises and to earn their votes.

Some were not ready to surrender. Sanders delegates wearing neon-yellow shirts with the slogan "Enough Is Enough" were sprinkled through the arena. The shirts seemed to glow every time the house lights faded.

Martese Chism, a Sanders delegate from Illinois, said the shirts stood for the movement's endurance after the "party shut the lights on us." The dissidents say the nomination process was rigged, arguing that superdelegates - elected officials and senior Democrats who do not have to follow the popular vote - threw the nomination to Clinton. (In fact, she won more popular votes and pledged delegates overall.)

"If she had won honestly, then it would have been historic," said Colorado delegate Victoria Bard, 50, a homemaker and mother of three.

Even amid the ruckus, the primary division seemed to be healing. A Pew Research Center poll released Monday found 90 percent of "consistent" Sanders backers would cast their ballots for Clinton. The survey had finished its sampling well before the Vermont senator moved to make Clinton's nomination unanimous during Tuesday's roll call of the states.

In a nod to the Rust Belt states both parties expect to decide the election, the lineup before prime time included speeches from an Ohio congressman, the former governor of Michigan, and Pennsylvania's Gov. Wolf.

One of the most gripping moments of the week came Thursday from an unlikely source: Khzir Khan, a Muslim whose son, a U.S. Army captain, was killed fighting in Iraq. Khan pulled a copy of the Constitution from his pocket, asking if Trump had ever read the nation's founding document. The room turned electric.

"I will gladly lend you my copy," Khan said.

Hours before Clinton spoke, the arena was rocking and stuffed to the rafters.

In the Pennsylvania seating area, some Sanders delegates were shuffled to overflow seating, near the Arkansas delegation, to help make room for party insiders, elected officials, and their family members who wrangled seats on the floor. The added guests drew the ire of Kat Richter, a Sanders delegate from Philadelphia who is in a wheelchair after surgery a week ago. She said she had to move three times before she could find a seat she could stay in.

Pointing to the non-delegates allowed on the floor, she said: "You were not elected, you did not collect 300 signatures, you didn't run in an election."

As notable as Clinton's achievement is, women still are less than 25 percent of American mayors, legislators, governors, and members of Congress, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

"People shouldn't be tricked into thinking the problem of underrepresentation of women in politics is solved," said Debbie Walsh, director of the Rutgers center. "There's so much more work to be done."

tfitzgerald@phillynews.com

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Contributing to this article were staff writers Justine McDaniel, Maria Panaritis, Julia Terruso, and Claudia Vargas.